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Social entrepreneur Strickland to speak at Princeton Oct. 12

Posted October 6, 2010; 10:51 a.m.

by Staff

Bill Strickland, social entrepreneur and a 1996 winner of the MacArthur Fellowship, will give a lecture titled "Make the Impossible Possible" at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2010, in Friend Center, Room 101. The talk is free and open to the public, with a reception to follow in the Friend Center Atrium. The lecture is sponsored by the Center for African American Studies and the Keller Center.

Bill Strickland is president and CEO of Manchester Craftsmen Guild and Bidwell Training Center. Manchester Craftsmen Guild offers programs in ceramics, photography, digital arts and painting to more than 500 children a year, as well as 3,400 students in the Pittsburgh inner-city school district. Ninety percent of the students receive high school diplomas, and 85 percent go on to enroll in college or secondary education. Bidwell Training Center trains more than 600 adults each semester for professional careers in the culinary arts, pharmacology and horticultural technology. Through partnerships with major corporations in the area, Bidwell Training Center has helped 73 percent of its graduates land meaningful full-time employment. Manchester Bidwell now includes a 350-seat jazz auditorium, a 40,000-square-foot greenhouse covering half a city block, a state-of-the-art chemistry lab, a full-scale ceramics department and a culinary institute. Strickland has received a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, lectured at Harvard Graduate School of Education, and served on the board of the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Pittsburgh.

Members of the media interested in attending the lecture should e-mail Jennifer Loessy, at jloessy@princeton.edu, no later than 5 p.m. on Oct. 11.